دلِ که سوز ندارد, دلِ نیست (the heart that has no love/pain/generosity is not a heart)
shrouded.., early spring morning from the hotel, Buddha cave site, Bamiyan, Hazarajat, Afghanistan, 4/17/08 [DSCF3106]![shrouded.., early spring morning from the hotel, Buddha cave site, Bamiyan, Hazarajat, Afghanistan, 4/17/08 [DSCF3106]. Jayce Salloum & Khadim Ali.](/images/stories/2010/heart-rom/gallery/DSCF3106-700.jpg "shrouded.., early spring morning from the hotel, Buddha cave site, Bamiyan, Hazarajat, Afghanistan, 4/17/08 [DSCF3106]. Jayce Salloum & Khadim Ali.")
3 April – 2 May 2010
Royal Ontario Museum, 100 Queens Park, Toronto
Level 2, Hilary and Galen Weston Wing
Co-presented by the ICC at the ROM and the Images Festival
Curated by Haema Sivanesan
Opening reception and artist talk: 3 April, 1-3pm
Curator's tour: 25 April, 2pm
In April 2008, Vancouver-based artist Jayce Salloum travelled with Afghan-Hazara artist Khadim Ali from Karachi, Pakistan to Kabul, Afghanistan and then overland into the Bamiyan Valley in Central Afghanistan. The artists traveled independently and to some extent clandestinely. The land is scarred by decades of conflict, ravaged by drought and desperate poverty, troubled by tribal rivalries and a persistent Taliban presence. Of specific interest to the artists were the ruined cave sites of the c. 5th century Buddhas, destroyed by the Taliban in March 2001. The ruins of the Bamiyan Buddhas provided a site from which to examine the situation of the Hazara people, a persecuted Shi’a Muslim minority, who believe themselves to be descended from the sculptors who produced the colossal figures of the Buddha.
Through the process of a cross-cultural collaboration, دلِ که سوز ندارد, دلِ نیست (the heart that has no love/pain/generosity is not a heart) records the destitution of current conditions in Bamiyan, reflecting on the sites of signification and rupture shaping an incipient modernity in Afghanistan. The project documents a significant moment in the history of the Hazara people, many of whom are seeking asylum in the West. The exhibition engages a sense of the complexity of the current situation in Afghanistan, taking up themes of the possibility of resistance, hope, beauty in the context of ongoing conflict.
